Their Eyes Were Watching God: Crash Course Literature 301 - YouTube (2)

And there are also questions about Tea Cake as a romantic hero.

I mean yes, he seems like a fun guy, but he takes Janie's money without asking,

and uses it to throw a party that he doesn't invite her to.

Later he beats her, out of a desire to prove his ownership of her.

So life with Tea Cake has a deeply ugly side.

And it's worth remembering that Tea Cake has to die before Janie can return to Eatonville on her own terms.

I'm not going to try to argue for one reading over another,

because I think what makes Their Eyes Were Watching God such a major American novel is its complexity.

It doesn't offer an easy answer for how a woman with Janie's life can achieve complete independence, or full selfhood.

I mean her last thoughts of the novel are not, “finally, I have achieved selfhood!”

Instead, she's thinking about Tea Cake.

Will she go through life alone, will she find another man or will she remain wedded to Tea Cake's memory?

Or because of his dying, rabid gesture, biting her in the arm,

there are some very skeptical critics who think it won't be long before she Janie dies herself.

And yet, Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of the very few novels of this period that is

centered around a woman speaking for herself and achieving an understanding of her own life —

complete with the feet, and the mules, and the hurricanes, all of it.

And it is that richness and complexity that makes the novel so special.

Thanks for watching, and watch out for rabid dogs. Also sexy pear trees.

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